Department of Parks
“A House Divided” Exhibit at Jefferson Davis State Historic Site

FAIRVIEW, Ky. – President Abraham Lincoln invoked the phrase “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  The phrase referred to his belief that the nation could not survive without a solution to the question of slavery.  Yet the Kentucky-born Lincoln might just as well have been talking about his in-laws. 

His wife, Mary Todd, was born into a slaveholding household in Lexington.  Of her 13 siblings, eight of them were Confederate sympathizers.  The “A House Divided” exhibit explores how their family’s statements and actions affected the Lincolns throughout the Civil War. 

The panel exhibit will be on display at Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in Fairview and is on loan from the Mary Todd Lincoln House.  It was created in partnership with the Lexington Public Library and funded in part by the Kentucky Humanities Council Inc. with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Kentucky Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission (www.kylincoln.org.) 

The exhibit will be on display at the museum on weekends beginning Nov. 12, 2010 through Dec. 12, 2010. The museum fee is $3 for adults, $2 for children 12 and under and $2 for seniors/military. Museum hours:  9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekends only.  The museum is located at 258 Pembroke-Fairview Road in Fairview.  For more information call (270) 889-6100 or email Ron.Sydnor@ky.gov.

--30--

The Kentucky State Park System is composed of 51 state parks plus an interstate park shared with Virginia. The Department of Parks, an agency of the Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, operates 17 resort parks with lodges -- more than any other state. For more information on Kentucky parks, visit our website at http://www.parks.ky.gov